


Gravity, and other forces

by sburbanite



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Falling In Love, Getting Together, M/M, Mild angst in the fourteenth century, Pining, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 17:08:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19398619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sburbanite/pseuds/sburbanite
Summary: Crowley was there when gravity was invented, but it doesn't have a fraction of the hold over him that a certain angel does.





	Gravity, and other forces

**Author's Note:**

> Very minor liberties taken here and there with canon, but mostly a lot of very silly dialogue and mild angsty feelings.

Crowley had been there when gravity was invented. It was just a little bit of celestial glue to hold the stars together, to make them dance their cosmic ballet against the firmament. It was mathematical, logical, just another force to make the Universe work.

It wasn't supposed to be _personal._

But then had come the fall; the screaming, burning tumble into damnation, and Crowley had known otherwise. The force that drew distant matter together across the light years was also a weapon. Atoms sang for connection, for closeness, for love. So did angels. That love could be denied.

He had fallen, not toward anything, but _away_. Repelled from the blazing core of creation into the emptiness beyond. Cast out, cut adrift. Crowley hated it. 

Later, when he was forced to squeeze himself into a body made of matter, he'd felt the ever-present tug of gravity again. The pull of his body toward the Earth, the miniscule, whispering tug of his atoms toward the distant stars. The stars he'd put there himself, had set in the sky with infinite care. He tried not to think about it.

He had feet to deal with now, and that was a hell of a thing. The wall of Eden was warm beneath them. The angel to his right was trying very hard to pretend it hadn't seen Crowley metamorphose awkwardly from a snake to a demon, and was failing utterly. They shared the very first uncomfortable moment in history, staring out over the desert in silence.

"Didn't you used to have a flaming sword?" he asked, and the angel groaned.

***

At some point in the first millennium, Crowley decided that Aziraphale was not just interesting, but Interesting, with a capital letter. The angel seemed to be drawn to humanity like a moth to a candle, sharing their sorrows and joys in equal measure without judgement. Angels were supposed to be all about judgement. It didn't make any _sense_.

Crowley watched him discreetly smooth the births of unwed mothers, watched him miracle food for the lepers and opium addicts when he thought nobody was looking. Good deeds, definitely, but not very angelic ones. And as Aziraphale was drawn to humanity, Crowley felt himself drawn to the angel. A watchful, distant orbit which led him to seek Aziraphale out every century or so, just so he could see if anything had changed.

Currently, the angel was sitting, hunched over by a campfire in the freezing desert south of Ur. He looked small and pale, a tiny speck of white against the darkness. 

"Alright?" Crowley asked, sitting down on the opposite side of the fire. 

"Mm."

They sat in silence. Crowley looked up at the stars scattering the sky above. It had been eighty years since they'd seen each other. He could wait until Aziraphale was ready.

"I rather think I might have mucked things up," the angel said, at last.

"How so?"

Aziraphale looked at him wretchedly.

"This business with the sword," he said, closing his eyes against the world. "Crawly, they keep _killing_ each other. Not to mention all this slavery business. I can't help feeling like it's all my fault."

Crowley thought about telling him, then, that he didn't much feel like Crawly the Serpent these days. He decided to save it for another time.

"Well, I mean. They've got free will, right?" He said instead, watching the angel carefully. "Nobody's making them kill each other." 

He looked around at the desert sands. They were littered with dozens of sharp, heavy rocks. 

"Something tells me," he continued slowly, "that they probably would've come up with that one on their own. Humans can be damned creative when they need to be."

Crowley hadn't personally killed anyone. It was much harder to tempt them to cheat and lie and swindle each other if they were dead, after all. He'd seen it, though. It was messy. He hadn't looked too closely.

"Do you really think so?" Aziraphale asked him, eyes shining in the firelight. There was hope there, too, bright and wavering; a little glimpse of the angel's true soul slipping through the heavenly façade.

"Yeah. I really do."

Aziraphale smiled. 

"I hope you're right, Crawly." The angel sat up straight and smoothed his tunic, flattening the creases across his stomach. 

"Oh, I almost forgot. Can I interest you in some of this? It's new stuff, made out of grapes, I believe. They call it 'wine'." He offered a cup to the demon, filled to the brim with dark liquid.

Crowley took it. Aziraphale leaned over and touched his cup Crowley's, clacking the wooden rims together. 

"The locals do it to drive off evil spirits," he explained. 

"I don't think it works."

"No," Aziraphale said, laughing, "no, I suppose not!"

The wine tasted of fire and old leather and the distant memory of grapes. It was the first alcohol Crowley had ever tasted. He was beginning to suspect he would develop a taste for it. When he thought about that night, hundreds of years distant, he would credit the sharp tug in his chest to the warm spreading glow of alcohol and the canopy of stars overhead. The angel who smiled, as bright as the full moon, and drank with him until the sun rose had nothing to do with it.

***

Over the centuries, Crowley got pretty damn good at not thinking about things. He didn't think about the kids who drowned in the deluge a few short centuries later, or about the kind, gentle man who was nailed to a cross for daring to suggest that people should be kind to each other. He didn't think about the constant ache in his hips where his lower body really wanted to be a tail, or about the ceaseless pull of the Earth that made it worse. Mostly, though, he tried very hard not to think about Aziraphale.

Most of the time Aziraphale managed to be everything Crowley wasn't; confident and connected and filled with a rock-solid surety that he was in the right. Basic angel stuff, but with a much better sense of humour and a generous spirit when it came to alcohol. Sometimes he slipped, though, just a little; let some of his carefully constructed angelic mask drop so that Crowley could see the doubts swirling underneath. 

He wondered if they were the same doubts he had, too, back before the Fall. Crowley was drawn to the angel inexorably, and he hated it.

And then, for the first time, Aziraphale found _him_.

Crowley was drinking morosely in a bar in Rome. He was doing a particularly terrible job of not thinking about things, and it was giving him a headache. And then, out of nowhere, there was Aziraphale.

"Still a demon then?" The angel had asked, and Crowley was hit with the realization that Aziraphale was so desperate to talk to him that he'd say something as mind-bogglingly stupid as _that_.

They had oysters, later. Crowley wasn't really a fan, but watching Aziraphale eat them more than made up for it. The angel closed his eyes as he swallowed, savouring the salt and garlic taste with a little shiver of pleasure. For a creature of Heaven, it was practically obscene.

"You little hedonist," Crowley said, grinning appreciatively, "How long was it before you finally cracked and tried food?"

Aziraphale looked embarrassed.

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't call me that! And I'll have you know I lasted decades. At least until they started making bread properly."

Crowley nodded. Unleavened bread had its charms, but it tended to stick in your teeth.

"Was yeast one of ours, d'you think? Alcohol certainly is."

"I think not! After all, people used to get dreadfully sick if they drank the water instead. Intestinal parasites are yours, dear boy. And just think of the medical uses. Alcohol is definitely the Lord's work."

In the background, someone very drunk slipped on a stray oyster and went toppling sideways into a table laden with amphorae. As was traditional with all good slapstick falls, a plate rolled out from amidst the carnage and spun loudly on its rim.

"You sure about that?" Crowley asked.

Aziraphale glared at him sternly. Underneath the angelic judgement, Crowley could sense his amusement. 

"That wasn't very nice, Crowley."

"I'm a demon, Aziraphale. We tend, on the whole, not to be _nice_."

Aziraphale looked at him, and then down at the oyster in his hand.

"If you say so, my dear," he said lightly, before eating it. There was butter on his chin, glistening richly, a smudge of it staining his tunic. Aziraphale saw Crowley staring at it and miracled it away. 

"Another round?" He said, beatifically.

They parted ways around midnight, setting out into the night; an angel with a dirty face, and a demon who left more than enough sestertii to cover the bill.

***

Crowley wondered if it was possible for it to drizzle for an entire century. The Fourteenth century had taken a turn for the cold and wet, and if the beds hadn't been so bloody awful he would have slept through the whole thing. He was trudging through the mud and filth of Eyam village, dawdling downhill toward the place where the angel pressed heavily into the fabric of his personal reality. It had been a thousand years since he'd started to be able to sense Aziraphale, no matter he was; an itch behind his eyes like the ones that guided migratory birds toward south.

Even without occult ESP, Aziraphale would have been easy to find. Not many plague doctors worked without gloves or touched the infected so readily. Not for very long, at least. He was bent over in the street, face hidden by a wide-brimmed hat and pointed mask, holding the hand of some poor wretch as his breathing rattled to a halt. When the man had passed, Crowley tapped him gently on the shoulder.

"Hullo, angel," he said, miserably.

Aziraphale jumped. Those masks must really cut down on the peripheral vision, Crowley realized. He stepped back, giving Aziraphale room to stand up take it off. Underneath, he looked almost as bad as Crowley felt.

"Oh. Hello again."

They stood in the rain for a while.

"Well," the angel said, with forced brightness, "what brings you here? I can't imagine anyone in this benighted country is well enough for your shenanigans."

 _It's you, you daft, self-sacrificing idiot_ , he wanted to say. _You who've holed yourself up here in this village of martyrs to take their pain away. You who's going to carry it around with you when nobody even remembers these people existed._

"Just passing through," he said instead, "Needed a distraction from all the rip-roaring fun happening on the continent."

Aziraphale just stared at him, through him, into some dark place where Crowley couldn't follow. In the next house over, somebody began to cough wetly.

"OK, angel. Time for a break. Let's go for a walk." Crowley dragged Aziraphale, unprotesting, to the open air of the village green. It was more of a village brown at the moment, thanks to the ever-present rain, but at least it was far enough away from the suffering humans that Aziraphale seemed to stop feeling pain by association. His eyes cleared, leaving them cold and hard.

"Crowley," he said, and the demon caught something in his voice he'd never heard before. It was _rage_.

"You will tell me, _now_ . Did you have anything, anything _at all_ , to do with this?"

Aziraphale stared him down with the force of Heaven's wrath burning in his eyes. Crowley blinked at him through his dark lenses.

"Well, y'know me. Never happier than when I'm playing "pin the infected flea on the plague rat" several million times in a row." He said, aiming for flippantly sarcastic and instead landing right in the middle of bitterly depressed.

Aziraphale suddenly surged forward and grabbed the front of his cloak tightly with both fists.

"Listen here, you _demon_ . Don't you _dare_ make light of this! Have you any idea how many of them have died? How painful each and every death has been?"

Aziraphale was trying very hard not to cry, but he held on tightly nonetheless. 

"Yeah. I do, Aziraphale." Crowley said flatly, "I do know. It's been bloody awful. My side didn't do this, or at least _I_ definitely didn't. Can't vouch for Hastur, of course, this seems like it might be his sort of thing." Aziraphale deflated, letting go of his cloak. Crowley belatedly realized how close to him the angel had been standing. "You have to admit, angel, it's not really my _style_ , now, is it?"

"No...no it isn't." Aziraphale said, shakily, "Oh dear, can you forgive me? It was a moment of weakness, I'm afraid."

Crowley shrugged. He was hurt, but it wouldn't do to let the angel know that.

"Course. No hard feelings. Demon, and all that." 

Aziraphale managed to look even more wretched.

"It's just so _damned_ horrible, Crowley. A third of them just dead, just like that. For no reason at all."

"Yeah," Crowley said bitterly, "not like those good old-fashioned _holy_ plagues, they were what? Just the first-born male infants? Y'know, the ones that really deserved it."

It was a low blow, and Crowley regretted it instantly. Aziraphale glared at him, turned on his heel and started to squelch back toward the village.

"Wait, wait, wait," Crowley said, catching up, "I'm sorry, that wasn't fair. None of that stuff was your fault. I shouldn't have brought it up."

"No. You should not." Aziraphale said, snippily.

"It's just this god-awful fucking century, it's making me itch all over! If this is the way civilization's going we might discorporate ourselves right now, because I can't take another soggy millennium of plagues and wars and flies and horses shitting _literally_ _everywhere_. It makes doing anything fun totally impossible."

Aziraphale nodded tiredly. 

"It does, rather. Do you remember Rome? They had aqueducts. And bathhouses. Lots of clean water and indoor heating…"

Both of them silently mourned the loss of indoor plumbing and underfloor heating.

"...Never mind, dear boy," Aziraphale said, patting Crowley's cloak absently. "It'll come back to them eventually. Not these particular humans, more's the pity. But...have faith, Crowley. They'll figure out how to do comfort again, I just know it."

"Faith?" Crowley hissed, disdainfully. "Demons don't have faith, Aziraphale. That's the _entire point_ of demons. Did you miss a memo or something?"

Aziraphale sighed. 

"Faith in _them_ , I mean," he said, gesturing toward the sad huddle of huts crowding the edges of the green. "The humans. They always seem to surprise us. This lot have decided to die here, every last one of them, so that the plague can't spread any further. We estimate they'll save countless thousands of lives."

"Poor, noble bastards," Crowley said. 

"Indeed. Where do you think they get it from, the courage to do something like that?"

Crowley thought about it. Their lives were so short. He had no idea what would make a mortal being sacrifice any of its time on Earth, even if it would save all the other ones. Then he thought about the ones who had siblings, cousins, children in other villages. Other people they cared about, that they would give literally everything to save. Humanity could be like that, he thought. More devious than any demon, sure, but with more grace in their smallest kindnesses than most of the Heavenly Host put together. 

Free will, with all its connotations.

"Haven't the foggiest, angel."

"No," Aziraphale said, sighing sadly again as he set off back toward the village. "Me neither."

***

It was in the blazing sunshine in the middle of the spring, on a beach in Cornwall of all places, where Aziraphale sought him out in return. It was only the second time in their long lives that Crowley hadn't been the one to initiate a meeting, and Crowley might have assigned some significance to that if he hadn't been so distracted. The thing doing the distracting was a large mechanical contrivance, all wheels and rivets and roiling steam, which was happily chuffing its way along the shoreline. 

"Crowley!"

The thing was basically a big teakettle, Crowley reasoned, and yet somehow this Trevithick chap had persuaded it to start moving about. He wondered if the water ever got tired and had to stop for a rest.

"I say! Crowley!"

No, that didn't sound right. Crowley had seen Trevithick shoveling coal into thing, stoking the fire until the boiler shimmered with radiated heat. The water must not like the heat, that must be it. Crowley reckoned that if someone lit a big coal fire underneath him he'd try to get the hell away from it pretty sharpish too. 

Aziraphale was ambling toward him on the back of an extremely rotund pony, which seemed more interested in trying to nibble the gorse bushes on either side of the path than in transporting its angelic cargo. Crowley still hadn't noticed him.

"Crowley! For Heaven's sake, my dear boy, have you gone deaf?"

He looked up and spotted the irate angel trying to wrestle his horse's nose out of a thicket of weeds.

"Aziraphale? What the hell are you doing in Cornwall?"

Aziraphale slid sideways off the pony and glared at him. He marched over the dunes and sat down next to the rock where Crowley was sitting. 

"I could very well ask you the same, Crowley! It's been months since I heard from you, you just up and left London without so much as a by or leave!"

Crowley smirked. Aziraphale had been so absorbed with his new bookshop he didn't think the angel would have noticed. "Missing me were you, angel?"

"Well, really! Anything could have happened to you!" Aziraphale leaned in conspiratorially and lowered his voice to a whisper, "I was worried they'd found out about the Arrangement! You know what they'd do to us, Crowley!"

Crowley's stomach twisted uncomfortably. Somehow it had never occurred to Crowley that Aziraphale would actually worry about him. 

"Er. Sorry. Didn't think about that."

"No. Well. Just let me know, next time."

Crowley swallowed. "Yeah. Alright."

It was weird, the creeping guilty feeling of having upset Aziraphale. The angel cared, though. That was good.

Aziraphale relaxed a little, leaning back on his elbows on the sand. Maybe this strange attraction, this reorientation of gravity toward the only constant in his Universe, wasn't as one-sided as Crowley had feared.

"Good. Good. I'll, um, do the same, naturally. If I need to go away for a while, I mean."

"I'd appreciate it." 

The breeze ruffled the white-blonde curls sticking out from beneath Aziraphale's hat. Crowley wondered if they were as soft as they looked.

"That is a truly outrageous contraption," Aziraphale said, squinting at the steam car puttering across the sand. "Humans, eh? Whatever will they think of next!"

The angel's smile was almost as dazzling as the sunshine. It made Crowley's heart dance in his chest.

"Fancy a ride in it?" Crowley said, grinning wickedly, "I have a feeling Mr. Trevithick is going to leave it unattended while he visits the restroom."

"What? Crowley, no! Don't be ridiculous!"

Crowley sauntered over to where the Trevithick was standing, shuffling from foot to foot. 

"Nice machine," he said, "need someone to watch it for you?"

Trevithick frowned and opened his mouth, most likely to tell Crowley very politely yet firmly to piss off, so Crowley snapped his fingers. The engineer blinked a few times and then wandered away toward the dunes. 

Aziraphale was aghast.

"What did you do!?"

"Oh, relax, Angel. He's just going to relieve himself and then he'll come right back. Now get on, we're going to take it for a spin."

Crowley slid into the driver's seat and pulled a protesting Aziraphale up onto the bench beside him.

"That's a lot of levers, Crowley, are you sure you know which one will make it, um, go?

"Nope," Crowley said, grinning from ear to ear, "but I'm going to have a hell of a time finding out!"

It took until the fourth lever before the thing actually moved, chuffing and puffing along as it slowly picked up speed. Crowley sent a little demonic thrill of fear through the water in the boiler, reminding it of the raging cauldron of stars where it was first created, and the machine lurched forward, surging across the sand as if the hounds of hell were after it. Crowley let out a whoop of joy and Aziraphale squeaked as the wind whipped his hat away into the surf.

"Slow down, you absolute lunatic!" He shouted, slapping at Crowley's arm, "You'll get us killed! There's no way I'll be able to explain _how,_ Crowley! Have you any idea how long those requisition forms are!?"

Crowley laughed, long and loud in the sunshine. The car sent a group of seagulls scattering up into the air, and Crowley thought of flying, long ago, when he didn't have the weight of the Earth pulling him down. This was the closest to that feeling he'd had in thousands of years, and he could tell it was only the beginning.

"Aziraphale!" He yelled, over the sound of the wind and the engine and the angel's screams of protest, "Isn't it brilliant? I'm going to have to get one!"

Aziraphale made a strangled noise.

Just then, the boiler ran dry, the last of the water escaping into the air and hurrying away from Crowley. The car ground to a halt. Crowley was a little disappointed. Maybe it'd be best to hold off on a purchase, he mused, until the humans figured out something less feckless than water to power their machines with. 

"Oh, thank goodness for that." Aziraphale said, sagging in the passenger seat. His hair stuck up at odd angles, a deranged halo of curls, and his face was flushed from the wind. Crowley felt his breath catch in his throat. Aziraphale had always been beautiful in an ethereal sort of way, but Crowley had never seen him look so human. It suited him, the same way his old-fashioned clothes and his silly little reading glasses suited him. He was perfect, in all his imperfect glory. Crowley felt a pain deep in his chest that he wouldn't have traded away for anything in the world.

"Can we please go back to London now, dear boy? Honestly, I haven't had a halfway decent meal in weeks and it's all your fault." Aziraphale said, pouting slightly.

"Oh, how ghastly, angel!" Crowley said, clutching his chest in mock horror, "you simply must let me tempt you to dinner. My treat."

"Well, as long as it's your treat, I'm in the mood for scallops. I hear the inn on the turnpike does some that should do nicely."

He and Aziraphale left the steam car on the sand, with the waves lapping gently at its wheels, and they left the pony munching it's way through the hedgerows. The walk to the coaching house was pleasant in the afternoon sunshine and Crowley found he didn't want the day to end.

***

Things between them had been shifting slowly, Crowley thought, as the centuries rolled by. He and Aziraphale had been circling one another; gently, softly falling inwards. And sometimes he pushed too hard, he knew that.

_You go too fast for me, Crowley_

But it didn't matter. He told himself it didn't matter. They were immortal, after all, which meant all the time in the world. The angel would come around. 

Crowley had spent 6000 years hoping and waiting and he would wait another 6000 if necessary.

And then Hastur had handed him a basket, and all the time in the world was suddenly no time at all.

Eleven years had flown past in a blur of nursery rhymes and lullabies, of watching Aziraphale pretend to garden from the windows of the Dowling house, of clandestine meetings underlined with tension. And then somehow, _somehow,_ things had gotten _worse._

Crowley wasn't sure he remembered most of it. He remembered reaching out desperately to Aziraphale, asking him for anything, anything at all. 

_We can go off together!_

He shuddered, leaning back against the arm of Aziraphale's overstuffed little sofa, and tried to forget the sensation of flames licking up the walls of the bookshop. It had been a week since their world had almost ended, a wonderful, terrifying week of calm and relaxation. They'd been together for almost all of it. Crowley was starting to wonder how long it would be before Aziraphale politely hinted that he had some inventory to do.

"Another drink?" Aziraphale said, smiling, as if nothing had changed. Or as if everything had changed. It was difficult to tell after a few bottles of really excellent wine.

"Yup. Always, angel."

Aziraphale handed him another glass and then sat down heavily on the floor, leaning up against the sofa so that his head was almost in Crowley's lap.

"Oh, Crowley, I am tired. Are you tired?"

"Bloody tired, angel."

Aziraphale looked up at him, blue eyes shining in the soft light. He was so beautiful Crowley thought his heart would break.

"Angel, can I ask you something?"

"Hmm? Of course, dear boy. Anything you like."

"What happens now?"

Aziraphale blinked slowly.

"Well, I thought we could have some whiskey in a bit. There's a rather nice single malt in the back room--"

"Aziraphale."

Crowley took his sunglasses off. He'd had enough of hiding.

"Um. I thought maybe we could...get somewhere together? A place, I mean? I know you have your flat, but I honestly don't think I'd want to actually live in it, no offense. The decor is a little austere for me. It's a little crypt-like to be honest, Crowley."

Aziraphale was blathering, which meant he was nervous. Crowley could sympathise. He felt like his stomach was trying to climb up out of his mouth.

"Angel." He said, swallowing thickly, "are you asking me to move in with you?"

Aziraphale nodded; a little, nervous incline of the head. Time stopped for a moment, no demonic influence necessary this time, as the implication of what Aziraphale was asking filtered into his brain.

"Wow. Yeah. Yes. Let's do that." 

Crowley grinned, and Aziraphale beamed back at him, eyes sparkling.

"Oh _good_."

Crowley was there when gravity was invented, but after that day he never thought about it again. There was only one fixed point his universe revolved around; to Crowley Aziraphale was the sun, moon and stars combined. That had been true for millennia, of course, but things were so much better these days. Now they orbited softly together around a small cottage, filled with books and statues and terrified vegetation.

Now Aziraphale would leave a cup of tea on the kitchen counter for Crowley when he ducked out to the greenhouse to menace his plants, or would try unsuccessfully to make eggs Benedict for breakfast. On Sundays, Aziraphale would sit in bed and do the puzzles in the Sunday Times while Crowley lay dozing curled up against him.

Every kiss shared, every touch of the hand was like coming home. 

"Well," Aziraphale said, on one such lazy Sunday, "That's the crossword done. Fancy a walk today, dear?"

Crowley didn't respond, only pressed his face into Aziraphale's side and wrapped his arms around him tightly. Aziraphale laughed and shook him gently, so Crowley hit him with a pillow.

"S'a day of rest, angel. Would've thought _you'd_ know that."

"Of course, how could I forget!" Aziraphale put the paper aside and lay down, stretching out luxuriantly, "In that case we'd better stay in bed all day, just to be safe."

"Mmm, in bed with a demon. Very dedicated."

"I'm practically a saint, really."

Crowley kissed him, long and slow and lazy, just because he could. Even if they had another six thousand years together, Crowley didn't think he'd ever get bored with the way Aziraphale responded, sighing happily as if Crowley was the only other person in existence. 


End file.
